For the moment there is a discussion going on if this forum should
advertise its existence. There are of course pros and cons.

Pros

Pro is that people who are seeking information about the life and works
of Roger Keith (Syd) Barrett should be able to find this place. If one
googles for Syd Barrett (or even tries Syd Barrett Discussion or Forum)
Late Night will not be found, at least not on the first half dozen of
pages. The initial website that hosted the forum, Astral Piper, says
that that the forum has been deactivated.
This is only partially true. It would take me too far her to give –
again – a historic overview. Well here it is in a nutshell: first came
the Astral Piper forum, it started somewhere in 2005 but was abruptly
shut down, due to personal problems, in May 2007. An alternative forum,
Late Night, was put into place and is still quite alive and kicking but
has never been approved (nor mentioned) by the Astral Piper website.

Cons

Late Night is a small secretive place, I once joked that you practically
need a godfather (or godmother) who invites you to become a member. It
is a small village with people that know each other very well. This
false notion of intimacy sometimes leads to personal disclosures and
emotional outbursts. Less and less Barrett issues are discussed by lack
of Syd, although from time to time the odd question is asked if Barrett
was wearing green or pink trousers on the 2nd of May 1967. It is not
that Late Night is a secret society, with strange rules, rituals and
relics; everybody is free to join, provided you can find the entrance to
the temple.

Wots... uh the deal?

Deciding in favour for the one or the other is what Günter Grass once
defined as the einerseits andererseits dilemma in his novel Kopfgeburten.
Eternal Isolation, administrator of Late Night, offers us a partial
solution to the problem. The forum will remain low key (the posts
will not be indexed by search engines for instance) but individual
members may promote its existence on their blogs and websites. And that
is exactly what I’m doing right now.

20080504

The Restaurant At The End Of The Typewriter

Douglas Adams (DNA) obviously was one of those persons who graduated summa
cum laude at the William Shatner Star Trek Unfinished Projects
University. An explanation may be needed here.

In the seventies several attempts were made to resuscitate Star Trek at
the movie theatres. Three scripts were made for what laughingly was
called Star Trek II: The God Thing, by Gene ‘thank god
for miniskirts’ Rodenberry; The Planet of the Titans,
Kirk going mad and thinking he’s a Greek god – I kid you not!; and an
unnamed blood sucking reptiles take over planet Earth story by
Harlan Ellison that would have saved Brazil’s rubber production for the
production of lizard suits alone. Every time someone uttered Star Trek
and movie in one sentence hordes of lawyers, agents and cocaine
delivery boys were summoned and gigantesque sums of money were handed
over to the actors of the original series, who were begged not to take
any other movie role for the time being. (This is valid proof of the
fact that movie people are a bunch of ass-eating monkeys; you must be
one sick person to even think that anyone wanted to cast the Star Trek
actors for another project.)

After these three aborted attempts there were talks for a new TV series
called Phase II. Business as usual: the actors got paid - nothing
got produced. But the good thing (probably good is not the right
adjective here) was that the pilot from the Phase II series grew into
that horrific monster called Star Trek: The Motion Picture
(ST:TMP). (Also here the choice of the adjective wasn’t really
appropriate: the picture did a lot of things but moving wasn’t
actually one of those.) Although ST:TMP contained a lot of miniskirts it
was rather disappointing and the tagline that this was the most
expensive SF movie ever was only true because the production company had
added all previous cost of all aborted projects inside ST:TMP’s budget.

Douglas Adams also was one of those people who were extremely busy
producing nothing and getting huge amounts of money for it. To quote
Steve Meretzky, co-author of the Hitchhiker Infocom
game: “Douglas certainly raised procrastination to an art form.” In 1983
DNA signed a contract with Infocom for 6 (six) text-adventure computer
games based on his Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (H2G2)
books. The first in the series came out in 1984 and sold a staggering
400 000 copies. But problems arose when Infocom politely reminded Adams
that is was about time to think of parts 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 of the series.
DNA who, according to his own terms, suffered from sequelitis,
came with another idea. Infocom didn’t want to kill the goose with the
golden eggs and reluctantly agreed to produce Bureaucracy.
When that game came out in 1987, already a couple of years overdue, it
sold a mere 40 000 copies. Days of text-adventure games were over. (I
stole most of the above from M.J Simpson’s biography: Hitchhiker.)

Although attempts were made to create a second Hitchhiker Infocom game Restaurant
At The End Of The Universe it was generally believed that the game
never left the development stage. But a few weeks ago, so after more
than 20 years, it was announced that a playable prototype does exist.

The full story (it is very long, you are warned!) can be read at the Waxy
blog. It is also interesting to browse through the comments as well.
These contain contributions, explanations and alternative timelines from
Infocom people such as Steve Meretzky (H2G2), Tim Anderson (Bureaucracy),
Marc Blank (Infocom VP and creator of Zork)
and Michael Bywater (Bureaucracy).

The playable prototype has been published on the web and can be tested
at the following URL (Java5 needed): Milliways.

20080508

ArianeB Hack-On

Erana the Sorceress, what's in a name?, has made an add-on for
the popular ArianeB dating simulator. I could go on about this but let's
pass the microphone to the girl (?)
in question:

To play it, you need to download and install first a copy of version 5.0
of the original game (link deleted, 2009). This add-on is not guaranteed
to work with later versions of the game.

There are over 1000 HTML files and over 900 pictures in the game; the
add-on includes only the actually modified or new HTML files, so you'll
need the remaining original ones in order to play it. The easiest way is
to simply copy all the HTML files of the addon (found in the "files"
folder) into the "dateariane" folder of the game,
overwritting the un-hacked files (you might want to backup them first!).

Also, the add-on ZIP file includes only the new and/or modified images.
You'll need the original JPEG files to play, too! Again, the easiest way
is to copy all the new pics of the add-on (found in the "images"
folder) into the game's own "images" folder (which is itself
inside the "dateariane" folder).

The hack includes the following features:

- Several bug fixes, most of them regarding the bikini. Ariane really
has trouble with all those bikini knots. :-)- Changed or added
scenes.

It goes without saying that the copyright of all the pics, of the game,
and of the source code remains firmly in the hands of the original
game's author. Thus, commercial distribution of this hack is prohibited.
Even if I (as in: it is I, Erana, the sorceress) were to give you
permission (I won't), the original author surely would not. And while a
fan add-on for a game that needs the original game to be played is
within the fair use rights, making money out of it is certainly not. In
other words: if you decide to ask money for this piece of crap and go to
jail because of it, don't come whinning back to me. Is your own damn
fault.

Hack by Erana the Sorceress. Creating nice spots for playable
characters since 1989.

I (as in: It is I, Felix) tried to contact the creator of the
original ArianeB game to get his permission to distribute the hack, but
alas his mail address is more secret than Xaviera
Hollander's address book. The add-on (sounds better than a hack,
isn't it?) has got the following 17 features, changes and bugfixes:

1 Basket scene changed to always get the boob flashing

2 French kiss returned to the makingout scene

3 Strip show changed to turn Ariane into a natural born stripper

4 New pics added to the dress and home decor stores, old ones restored
to the lingerie's

5 Bar scene changed for extra flashing fun

6 Beach scene vastly expanded

7 Entire Rebecca subplot optionally strung together

8 Yes, you can now have that threesome, but only if you made
EVERYTHING right first

9 Hot tub scene rewritten with extra content

10 Finalsex slideshow instead of blank black image

11 Assorted pics in AB's laptop

12 Downtown options expanded

13 Amusement park and nude photoshoots now return home afterwards

14 Drinking, nudity and foreplay limits have been relaxed, but not
removed

15 Certain actions now reset the car, stargaze and park options

16 A few surprises in the opening moves

17 Stargazing is now much more rewarding

Oh yeah, probably you are wondering right now were to download this 2
and a half MB goodie. For the moment it is right here on this place, but
before you go ahead I would like to warn you that some of the new pics
are rather risqué. (Update: download locations
deleted as these versions are not valid anymore.)

Note: The internet: where men are men, women are also men, and 13 year old
girls are FBI agents. Back to main text.

20080510

ArianeB 5.00 Add-On Walkthrough

The following hintfile has been written by Erana, the Sorceress
who is responsible for the ArianeB 5.0 bug fixing add-on showing some
extra scenes and situations. Of course you need to download and install
the add-on first. More information how to do that can be found at: ArianeB
Hack-On. Before you download the add-on it is also advised to backup
your original copy of the Arianeb
Dating Simulator. The add-on will only work with version 5.0.

VIRTUALLY DATING ARIANE ERANA'S ADD-ON DETAILED GUIDE

First, the basics. To install the thing, just follow CAREFULLY the
instructions in the readme.htm file. No need to repeating myself here!

Intro scene: now you have a shortcut to sidestep it. But, BY YOUR
HONOR, don't use it if she never told you to "come back anytime"! ;-)Drinking,
nudity and make-out: drinks limit has been raised to about a dozen,
and every drink now resets the stargazing and park options. Nudity is
also now allowed by default. Face and top make-out limits have been
raised to effectively more than you'll need in the game. Bottom make out
limit has been raised by not so much, so you can STILL get the handjob
ending if you want. Top make out now also resets the car drive.
Kiss-French Kiss returned to couch make out.Stargazing: you
have three choices per stargaze, and you can stargaze in a wider number
of situations, with increasingly "interesting" results. Every time you
have a drink, the stargazing option is reset, too. Also, you now can not
miss unless you actually want to.Games: the randomness has
been removed from basket, you always win and she always flashes you
trying to prevent it. Spin the bottle now always yields park photo shoot
as it can not be reached otherwise (except through one (1) certain
stargazing option). RPS remains random - what's the point otherwise?Dance
laptop pics: you can see Ariane's photos wearing different clothes,
based upon the clothes you have managed her to wear (not) ;) The only
effect in the game is that if you ask her about a certain nude pic, she
will model it live if you "get lucky" later on. Some people have
reported trouble exiting the laptop. It's an IE7 problem. Damn Bill
Gates. :) Just use backspace. It won't cause problem at this particular
part of the game, albeit it would cause them at other points.Beach
scene: going to the beach in a non-romantic context now gives you
the option to sit down to admire the view and talk about Ariane's
college years. Doing so and choosing the right answers opens the "crazy
all-nighter" mode, where you can stay downtown as long as you want and
some new options are opened, like the new dresses (sailor suit, silk
kimono and Rebecca outfit). Also, going in a romantic context, you now
have the possibility of having sex in the beach.Lingerie store:
repeatedly choosing no lingerie reactivates the old (version 4.7)
lingerie pics.Dress store: see above for "crazy time" new
pics. Also, buying the white dress activates the "white dress pic" scene
later on.Home decor store: IF you have bought the white
dress, you'll be able to buy a print of an older Ariane's photo shoot
with a similar dress. If you buy it, you still have the option of
remaining downtown, which is needed for later scenes. Some events only
happen if you have bought that pic.Downtown: you have the
option to enter every place from downtown, also have the option of
returning home, going to the outskirts or taking a trip to the amusement
park.Club: now you can actually exit the bar after having a
drink. Also, the Reb and Ari erotic dance is now activated if drinks >=
4. After it, instead of ending the game, you have the choice of going
home to the pool, or going to the strip club.Strip club:
Ariane never tires from stripping. Removing the top as the first action
still causes you to lose, in case you want to. If Rebecca is with you,
you get the option of she coming with you to a pool party, or coming
home just with Ariane for hot-tubbing.Hot tub: you can
actually convince her to undress if she is drunk enough. Regular kiss
and French kiss are back. If you got the live sex show and play ToD, she
DOES accept the "touch your pussy" dare :)Threesome
(the one you all were waiting for I bet): IF you got the crazy time, AND
made the live sex show, AND got Ari to show Reb the old white dress pic,
AND are playing Marco Polo in the nude, AND exit the pool, Ariane will
hook with Reb and she will also offer you to watch them. Whatever you
do, don't get distracted later on :) If you stay, you'll have your own
sex show while Reb tells Ari how she always had the hots for her, and
later you'll have sex with Ariane (only). If you leave them alone like a
gentlemen, you won't see them together, a very grateful duo of new
girlfriends will allow you to have an extensive sex session with them
the next day.Final sex slide shows: instead of a boring black
screen, the final "stay the night" screens gives you several pics. Just
click different parts of the screen for them.

This walkthrough by Erana the Sorceress. Creating
nice spots for playable characters since 1989.

If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: ArianeB
5.0

20080517

Kraft und Karl

I should be more careful with what I write, so told me a good friend. I
know. I gave up good manners a while ago soon becoming the fat bellied
belching and farting man in the restaurant at the end of my own private puniverse.
After dinner mint anyone? Slowly I've become the person I once loathed.
A transgression like in an Arthur Machen novel.
Taste, even bad one, does change with age.

In 2003, after nearly two decades of doing nothing, the German band Kraftwerk
came out with their Tour de France album. I was ecstatic. I tried
to explain to people who found the album dull and monotonous that
Kraftwerk wanted it to be that way. This was a postmodern representation
of a real cycling event: 230 km of monotonous macadammacadammacadam
with just a hysterical sprint at the end. Kraftwerk had promoted
monotony to an art form. Stuff like that.

The press, who are normally circling like hungry vultures around – what
they describe as – dinosaurs of rock, were also extremely gentle to the
German band as if Kraftwerk were a kind of electronic Illuminati
who may not be contradicted. But that the band could still kick ass was
proven on the European MTV awards in 2003 where they mimed Aerodynamik
to a generally stunned public. At around 2 minutes 30 (starting from the
beginning of the song) an open mike unwillingly records a comment from a
baffled bystander: “What the fuck is this?” This, my friend, is
Kraftwerk, and to quote a further unknown music journalist: at 50 it is
of more importance to be able to say: "I used to be a member of
Kraftwerk" then: "I used to be a member of Pink Floyd."(Note)

While Tour de France (TDF) flooded the world like an electronic
tsunami a former Kraftwerk band member, Karl Bartos, retorted with a
solo album called Communication.
Karl had left the band in 1991 allegedly because the other members had
been more involved in designing aerodynamic bicycles then in making
music. The Communication album was an insult to my ears, and I
didn’t hesitate to ventilate my opinion on alt.music.kraftwerk. The
Bartos album was Eurotrash
to the extreme and I just couldn’t understand that the man behind it was
the same dude who had given us such classics as Numbers, Computer Love,
The Model and the 1983 prototype of Tour de France.

But anno 2008 none of the TDF tunes have made it onto my iPod while
Communication is represented by 10 titles. And I have to confess: each
single track of Communication contains enough kling klang material so
that Kraftwerk could make an entire album out of it.

I won’t call Communication a good album; I still find it pretty average.
But average in a pretty decent way.

Note. I couldn’t trace the source of this quote. But I once read it in a
Kraftwerk live performance review. Back to text.

20080520

Much Ado (the sequel)

Audacity,
the excellent freeware audio editor has got a new beta release, but that
is not the topic of this post, but now you know it anyway. What I really
wanted to say is...

In 2006 I wrote a topic about my most treasured vintage computer games.

Spindizzy was one of those and the original Tetris if my
personal RAM is still intact. Anyway if you promise to come back after
the intermezzo you can read about it here: Much
Ado.

Tetris clones can be downloaded by the dozen, but my favourite amongst
those is still the Blockout
3D version from California Dreams that accompanied the original game on
my very first 8086 computer. It took me about 30 seconds to trace the
game back in my box of floppies. Here is a printout of the about
bit (it is amazing that this floppy still works after nearly 20 years):

Spindizzy clones are harder to find and the open source remake that was
promised for 2007 is still on the design table. The thread
on the Retro Remakes forum has now got 21 pages proving there is a
certain interest for this remake. If you want to experience the look and
feel of Spindizzy you can have a go at a Flash-based clone called Gyroworld.
It all looks relatively simple but it is addictive as hell.

Another one of my all-time favourites is Theme Hospital. The 3D clone
has now been indefinitely delayed (if one reads between
the lines of the Round Donut forum) but apparently the creative team
is trying to make a fresh restart in June of this year. It must be the
second or third time now that the project is trying to resuscitate so if
you don’t want to drop dead in the hospital corridors don’t hold your
breath. My endless dwellings on the web in search for some Theme
Hospital news lead me to Connection
Endpoint. Alexander Gitter did some reverse
engineering on the original Theme Hospital game, hoping that someone
would catch his drift and turn it into an open source project. But alas…

The original 2006 topic about my top 3 games ended with the sentence:
“And what about the best game ever then?” I realize now that I have
never concluded that post. I have never stated here what is, in my own
not so humble opinion, the best game ever.

Well, let me tell you… but just another time. First I’m going to have a
go at it first. You will not have to wait for another year, I promise
you that.

If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: East
Side Story

20080524

Tycooning

I once met this young guy, bright, slightly nerdy computer chap, who
liked to travel to Jamaica in order to inhale some of the local herbs
and drink a few gallons of rum. But his finest hour came when he
discovered Thailand and its abundance of sweet smelling Rosies.

After each visit he came home loaded with original Thai movies,
music and software. One of these packages contained a fine selection of
DOS computer games: Links 386 Pro (the best golf simulator of the mid
Nineties, later bought by Microsoft), Sim
City 2000, Twinsen’s Little
Big Adventure (remind me to dedicate a post in the near future to
this incredible adventure) and something that I would almost like
to call the best game ever. It involved trains, planes and automobiles
and its main purpose was to transport people, mail, coal, iron ore,
cattle and grain from one place to another (and making money out of it).

Sounds simple? It wasn’t always.

Building railroads was its most rewarding feature. Since 1995 I have
lost lost countless hours of my unfruitful life just watching the
avant-garde interactive ballet
of trains and semaphores.

I just called Transport
Tycoonalmost the best game ever. That is because a year
later, that must have been 1995, Chris
Sawyer released Transport
Tycoon Deluxe or TTD (sometimes TTDL). The most interesting
improvement of the game was a new set of semaphores enabling a greater
control on the train tracks.

TTD migrated with every computer that I owned. It was playable under DOS
(obviously), Win 3.11, Win95, Win98 (and ME), but when I finally
purchased me an XP machine one of the biggest counterpoints of that
operating system was that Transport Tycoon Deluxe refused to run on it.

Lucky for me there were a bunch of TTD enthusiasts who found that it was
about time to make this game playable under XP as well. TTDPatch
not only made the game XP compatible, it also gave the players from the
third Millennium the change to pimp up the game (originally TTDPatch had
been created by Josef Drexler to solve a few bugs). Nowadays over 160
new features can be switched on (or off): new graphics, new vehicles,
new industries, new signals and so on and so on… As the readme file says…

Now you'll be able to own 240 trains, 240 road vehicles, 240 planes and
240 ships, and altogether up to 40,000 vehicles. Also you can have
larger stations, with up to 7 platforms, each with a length of up to 7
squares, or even mammoth trains with up to 126 carriages.

New Signals: Pre-signals offer a new way to guide your trains and allow
very small, yet efficient stations.

New Graphics: TTDPatch enables new vehicles with new and exciting
graphics, and supports making even more vehicles with a new add-on
mechanism.

Other conveniences, including refittable train engines, mixed stations
with different types of trains, selectable station goods, more useful
"full load" option, the ability to use realistic acceleration on
mountains, or turn off the effects of curves and mountains entirely, and
much, much more.

TTDPatch soon grew into a very slick little GUI, with Windows style
wizards, checkboxes and switches (no need anymore to manually alter some
code somewhere on a initialization file) and has the ability to upgrade
and download new graphic files on the fly. It also has the very neat
possibility to downgrade back to the previous fail-safe version if
something goes wrong.

With TTDPatch still being very active a new project saw the light of
day: OpenTTD.
This open source project still uses the graphic files of the original
game but has released its own executable. OpenTTD
tries to incorporate the best of TTD and the TTDPatch although the two
projects have diverged a bit the last couple of years. OpenTTD runs on
about 20 different operating systems, including Linux and Vista, and
multiplayer abilities (using LAN or Internet) have been fully integrated.

Some features of the TTDPatch are not implemented in OpenTTD and vice
versa but it seems that the battle of the Transport Tycoon cloning
devices is slowly tilting in favour of OpenTTD. Not so long ago a
developer from the first project announced
that he was changing sides and if my opinion can be of any service here,
I also have made the switch from Patch to Open a couple of months ago.

Transport Tycoon has entered the 21st century and it is probably still
going to be around for a while. Strangely enough the only person who is
unwilling to see that is the original author of the game, Chris Sawyer,
who writes on his FAQ:

Neither the DOS version nor the Win95 version will run under Windows
2000 or XP. The changes required for Transport Tycoon Deluxe Win95 to
run under Windows 2000/XP are probably minimal, but it's unlikely it
will ever be updated unless the time and costs can be justified by
potential sales and the willingness of the publisher to market an
updated version.

Apparently he has never heard of OpenTTD or of TTDPatch but he will have
my eternal blessings for making the greatest game on Earth - ever.

And then there is still the story to tell of my geeky friend who lend me
his copy of Transport Tycoon. He finally decided to move to Thailand,
married a Hard Rock Café waitress and they got a son. After a couple of
years his computer shop started to become a business but before he could
grow into the Thai equivalent of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates his vintage
Volkswagen was crushed into a million pieces by a passing truck. As a
matter of fact, so was he...

20080531

Twinsen Ma Non Troppo

I urgently need to stop writing about these games I’ve once played.
Remembering LBA (Little
Big Adventure aka Relentless in the USA) in a previous post Tycooning was
enough for me to go hunting after it. I soon found the floppy version
(only 13 MB) and thanks to Dosbox
I could play it in a jiffy.

I tried it for a couple of days and decided that the floppy version
wasn’t exactly what I wanted, although it does contain the complete
game, but without the vocals and the intermediate movies. So I went
webbing at the market-for-free for a cd version. Now I want to tell you,
girls and boys, that I am totally opposed to downloading copyrighted
games. But LBA is presently floating in a grey
area that game aficionados call Abandonware
and – AND – I used to have a completely legal - official - original cd
of LBA in the past but I can’t find it anymore, honestly. Probably I
lend it to somebody who never bothered to give it back. Not that this
comment would carry much weight at the court of law.

Finding a cd version of LBA isn’t hard, there are several versions
floating on the web, but making it run was nearly an adventure as
exciting as playing LBA itself. Dosbox has the ability to masquerade a
folder on your drive as a virtual cd-drive, provided you have a
so-called image of the cd you want to store on the harddisk, and that is
what I wanted to test.

One 460 MB download contained a NRG
file but it wasn’t recognised as a valid cd image. I extracted the file
with Izarc
so that its directory structure was revealed and created an ISO
file out of it, using an utility called ImgBurn.
This time Dosbox mounted
the ISO-image without a problem and I could install LBA from the virtual
cd drive (D:\) on a virtual dos drive (C:\).

But when I wanted to start the game I got an error that there was still
no cd present. Blast, blast and triple blast! This was a dead end for
sure. But if Twinsen, the hero of LBA, refused to give up trying to save
his world from the dictatorial reign from the evil FunFrock, so would I.

µTorrent
lead me to a 496 MB archive that contained a cd IMG
file that was created with yet another cd-copying tool. Bingo! Here is
how my Dosbox configuration file looks like now:

Although Twinsen’s world is populated with hilarious bunnies and funny
elephants that seem to have escaped from a Teletubbies show it doesn’t
mean that this is a child game, quite the contrary. If a hostile
elephant grabs you he clobbers you to death as in a Quentin Tarantino
movie and there are several really-very-close-to-suicide missions (the
screenshot above-left shows an unhappy encounter with an armed Rabbibunny
clone) .

It took me several hours to get through the Temple of Bù (rolling logs,
spitting fire balls, murderous skeletons) and believe me; it can be very
frustrating to get through a maze of blazing mitraillette
fire only to be killed at the end by a soldier who comes out of the
toilet.

On the other hand LBA is very humorous in a kind of continental way, LBA
was (is) a French game and thus PC (as in political
correctness) is not casting its evil shadow over it. The second LBA
game, so I recall, started with a very proud Twinsen who shows us his
big-bellied girlfriend, and correct me if I am wrong, there are not many
games around where the protagonist has a pregnant wife to care for.

I was amused to find out that there is still a rather active LBA community
on the web, with people trying to make a fan-based Twinsen prequel
and others still hoping for the release of LBA3,
a project that was stopped when the original company merged /
disappeared / went bankrupt (just pick your choice). Apparently the
original makers
of the game still try to revive the interest for the third part of the
trilogy . But for the moment all that there is to read on their website
is: coming
soon…

If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Tycooning